Mapping the Zone: A Thomas Pynchon discussion podcast

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneIf you enjoyed our discussion, please check out the following media we talked about:YouTube: Maggie Mae Fish - The Surprising History of Hollywood Strikes: Blacklists, Labor, and the Mob - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07bwL0fiM1AFilms: Judas and the Black Messiah (2021; dir. Shaka King), Blue Velvet (1986; dir. David Lynch)Music: Frank Zappa (listen to all of it, but start with Apostrophe or Overnite Sensation)Books: A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune. An Oral History (Max Evry), If on a winter's night a traveler (Italo Calvino), Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson), Solenoid (Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter), Fem (Magda Cârneci, translated by Sean Cotter)As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneFrank Zappa at the PMRC Senate hearings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0wMaggie Mae Fish — Veterans After War | An Analysis of RAMBO + THE STRAIGHT STORY: https://youtu.be/HRnEjsdjtks?si=vx-3GvKgDqzNdx-0Movie/TV recommendations: The work of David Lynch — Eraserhead (1977), Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 1992, 2017), Lost Highway (1997)Music recommendations: Jaco Pastorius “Portrait of Tracy” (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsiuGcUniQReading recommendations: David Foster Wallace “David Lynch Keeps His Head”—found in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997)As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

We're back from our brief break and ready to jump into the back half of Vineland. We get some more insight into Frenesi's past and her involvement with 24fps as well as her relationship with Brock. Speaking of, we get our first real scenes with Brock, showing just how awful he truly is.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneStrap into the Puncutron, cue up your preferred accompaniment, and enjoy our discussion on the back half of Chapter 9—Thanatoids, towing conferences, and a whole lot of dense symbolism to get lost in! Make sure you stick around for some actually appetizing food discussion at Your Momma Eats and we’ll see you when we get back from our break!As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Twitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneChapter 9 is quite expansive, both in its content and page count, so we split it into two parts. In the first half, we cover the events ending at DL and Takeshi's "encounter". So join us a we... get to the bottom of the giant footprint (among other topics of discussion) and come back next week for the thrilling conclusion of Chapter 9, in which DL, Takeshi, Prairie, Zoyd, Frenesi, and Weed Atman fight giant mecha-kaiju in a battle to save the planet!As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Twitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneThere's so much food talk in this book that we could've turned this show into a food podcast dedicated to awful concoctions. Despite that, we found quite a bit of other conversational morsels to chew on regarding these chapters.Buckle up for next week, 'cause Chapter 9 is a long one!As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

The scheduling goblins kept us from being able to record our discussion on Chapters 7-8 of Vineland this week, so Kate was kind enough to record a reading of Pynchon's 1993 article, The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, To Thee.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneWe'll be back next week to talk Vineland again!As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

We’re down one co-host again this week, but that won’t stop us from talking about the fascinating history of the ukulele. Not to give too much away up front, but we’ll just say that the importance of choosing the right tonewood for a uke makes all the difference. We also take a side-quest into debating the pros and cons of analog and digital synthesizers.We also spent a bit of time talking Chapters 5 & 6 of Vineland and all the weird, wacky beauty that is contained within those pages.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

In this special Thanksgiving episode of Mapping the Zone, we take a look at the 1973 made-for-TV special, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. We examine the intertextual relationship between the fabled television special and Pynchon’s magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow—how does Charlie Brown’s journey mirror that of Slothrop? Is Lucy’s arc similar to that of Katje, or are there not enough giant octopi? Why is Linus at The White Visitation and why is Snoopy acting on behalf of Jamf? We’ll tackle these important questions in this week’s episode.Does anyone really read these show notes? Enjoy our conversation on Chapters 3-4 of Vineland. We’ll get around to the Pynchon/Peanuts connection at some point.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

We’re back and crashing into Vineland like it was a plate-glass (or maybe safety glass) window! In this episode, we spend some time talking about the work as a whole and its place in Pynchon’s oeuvre—often maligned as “weak” (false) or “Pynchon-lite” (gross), the book has garnered something of a reputation among fans. Coming along almost two decades after Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineland certainly—albeit unfairly—had quite high expectations placed upon it. So, how do we feel about it? Why would I tell you that in the show notes? Listen and find out!This episode opens with a general discussion on the book in general and our history with it. Our discussion of Chapters 1-2 begins at 45:38.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneArticles mentioned in this episode:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1990.9933800https://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews/fiction-literature/pynchon-s-pop-fictionAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Show art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com